Public fear is a poor basis for anti-terror laws

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If we lose perspective on the threat of terrorism to
Australia, we risk losing the fight for our free
society.

TODAY'S AgePoll suggests Australians are resigned to a terrorist
attack, with 70 per cent seeing it as likely within two years.
National security is fertile political ground for the Government
(by contrast, only one in four voters supports its industrial
relations and Telstra policies), so it is always ready to come up
with new counter-terrorism measures. The Government says, quite
reasonably, that it must defend the greatest human right, the right
to life, but terrorism hasn't claimed a life on Australian soil
since 1978. We should keep the threat in perspective. There are
greater threats to Australians' lives. We would be horrified if
terrorism killed 1700 people and seriously injured 22,000 this
year, but the national road toll does not inspire calls to ban cars
or closely monitor all suspect drivers. Scientists say a flu
pandemic is more than "likely"; it is a certainty. Even by the
national pandemic management plan's conservative estimates, up to
44,000 lives would be lost. At worst, 200,000 could die in Victoria
alone. Again, there is no agitation to close the borders to
potential flu carriers.

Terrorism, it seems, is different. The Government aims to make
it an offence to encourage, justify or glorify terrorism anywhere
in the world. It also wants wider powers to ban radical groups. It
should not be forgotten that despite the grave threats of the Cold
War, Australians rejected a ban on communists. The war was
comprehensively won, at home and around the world, because such
battles are ultimately won by weight of evidence, argument and
public opinion, not by silencing the radical fringe. Of course,
laws to prevent terrorist conspiracies and incitement to violence
are consistent with democratic principles. But what of laws against
justifying or sympathising with terrorism here and abroad? Will
such laws stop terrorists, or just silence dissent? It is
conceivable that statements on Iraq by the winner of last year's
Sydney Peace Prize, Indian writer-activist Arundhati Roy, could
have broken such laws. And where would Australians who supported
the ANC's cause against apartheid have stood had such laws applied
when it resorted to violent attacks on civilian targets? If Senator
Bronwyn Bishop's view of Muslim headscarves as an "iconic act of
defiance" were ever to take hold, could wearing these be a
statement of sympathy for terrorism?

These examples may seem extreme, but we should know by now that
the irrationality and obsession that terrorism inspires are potent
weapons. It unnerves nations and distracts them from greater
priorities and threats. At worst, it panics democracies into
surrendering the freedoms of speech and belief, however radical or
ludicrous, that are the citizens' defence against state tyranny. In
1932, when Americans were in the grip of the Depression, Franklin
Roosevelt's inaugural address named their greatest enemy: "the only
thing we have to fear is fear itself  nameless, unreasoning,
unjustified terror, which paralyses needed efforts to convert
retreat into advance". Australians must aim to advance the
democratic basis of their way of life in an uncompromising fight
against terrorism. It makes no sense to accept laws that create a
second threat to the freedoms and values that have made this
country what it is.